Tory threat to rail chiefs' bonuses if they let down travelling public

Should the Tories win the General Election, they would also make the Office of Rail Regulation a "passenger champion".

Ms Villiers said that the railways should be more accountable to passengers and the Department for Transport's "micromanagement" of the network would be scaled back.

She also said the Conservatives would end Network Rail's station improvement "monopoly", with the work being done by train companies instead.

Senior Network Rail bosses received six-figure bonuses of hundreds of thousands of pounds earlier this year despite the regulator's efforts to persuade the company's remuneration committee to take into account poor performance on the West Coast Main Line.

Ms Villiers said: "We will make the people who run our railways more accountable to passengers. So we will give the Rail Regulator the power it needs to get tough on NR – by confiscating or cutting the bonuses of senior management – when it fails its customers."

She added that the regulator would be turned into a passenger champion by giving it responsibility for monitoring key elements of train operator performance that mattered to passengers.

She went on: "We need change to ensure the rail industry works more cohesively together with a stronger, more unified focus on the issues that matter to passengers, such as tackling overcrowding and improving value for money."

Ms Villiers was speaking in London yesterday evening at an event organised by think-tank Politeia.